JUST 20 years ago, the UK was so idiotically credulous it believed there was a new breed of pigs that fitted cutely into teacups. We actually fell for this bollocks:
Micropigs
The pipeline is now well-established: family buys miniature piglet they assume won’t grow any bigger, piglet gets bigger, family ends up with 700-pound porker grunting and snuffling around their suburban home because there’s no such thing as a micropig and never has been. And the Beckhams never had them, either.
Geek chic
A trend marked by check shirts, braces, thick rimmed glasses, bow ties and moustaches printed on just about everything. Some still have curly moustaches tattooed upon their index fingers to hold under their noses. And geeks turned out to be unattractive regardless, because owning every issue of the Fantastic Four is not sexy.
Emos
The Diet Coke Goths lurked around town centres in their uniform of skinny jeans, racoon-like eyeliner, studded belts, lip piercings and dyed-black hair in long face-hiding fringes. Defined by introversion, self-loathing and social alienation until they realised they were only unpopular because they listened to shit emo bands.
Charity wristbands
Promoted by serial drugs cheat Lance Armstrong and serial twat Chris Martin, in 2005 you were no-one unless you collected stretchy coloured bands that implied any non-wearer didn’t give a f**k about poverty, AIDS, or bullying. Ended when it was found Make Poverty History bands were produced using forced labour and making poverty very much present.
MSN Messenger
No noughties teen could live without spending all evening messaging friends until they had to G2G or BRB. They’d log off and on, vying for the attention of crushes by seeming coy and mysterious, changing profile names to anything angst-ridden enough to prove to Sophie in year nine biology how badly they were taking the break-up.
Blazin’ Squad
The boyband reached its apothesis and conclusion in Blazin’ Squad, which rostered up to 300 members at a time all enlisted from a single Walthamstow lamppost. Had one chart-topping success with a cover version and adopted pseudonyms like Flava and Melo-D, because that was the only way they could legitimately claim to have either taste or melody.
